that they should follow to manage
expectations. However, only one of the
respondents even had such guidelines,
and we were not given a copy.

Finally, the expectations presented
in this study have been mentioned by
project managers on behalf of contractors. In our context, the choice of
respondents was guided by our focus
on identifying approaches for managing
expectations. Future research needs to
replicate our study and conduct interviews with customer managers. Comparing customer expectations with the
contractor’s perception of those expectations will help uncover discrepancies between these two stakeholder
groups and gain further insights into
the development process in IS projects.
For instance, contradictory findings will
help better understand misled perceptions on behalf of project managers
attempting to manage customer expectations in ISD projects.

Conclusion

We show the relevance of customer satisfaction concerning the ISD process
for the success of ISD projects from the
perspectives of project managers. The
identified approaches of managing customer expectations toward the development process can help project managers
increase the likelihood of customer satisfaction and thus project success. By
revealing customer expectations toward
the development process, we illustrate
the diversity of aspects that project managers need to address in order to pave
the way for successful projects. Whereas
we contribute to a deeper understanding of the role of managing expectations
in ISD projects, dependencies between
expectations and approaches for managing expectations are to be addressed
by future research.

References

ing customer expectations during the
development process. Robert explains
in this regard, “Leadership . . . also
means to me that I have the soft skills
to direct and lead the customer. Not to
enforce the own ideas, that is not what
it is about; but to direct the customer to
the better solution. . . . And at the end, he
says: That is exactly where I wanted to
go.” Similarly, Ben states: “Even though
the first conversation was not like this
to 100%, at the end the customer had
the feeling that the decision was made
together.” These quotes illustrate that
the process of managing customer
expectations needs to be cooperative
rather than instructive in nature.

Limitations

As with any empirical study, ours is
not free of limitations. First, though
we randomly contacted companies to
avoid a selection bias and the results in
general converge to common themes,
we cannot guarantee that interviewing further project managers would not
lead to further insights. The generalizability is limited by the sample size of
12 respondents; however, our analysis clearly shows theoretical saturation
(see subsection Quality Criteria), which
makes us presume the representativeness of our results.

Second, our interviewed project
managers work for small and medium-sized enterprises. Managing expectations in larger companies may be
subject to further factors, which influence expectations and approaches for
managing these.

Third, the interviews have beenconducted via phone. Consequently,we were unable to observe respon-dents’ nonverbal communication. How-ever, using telephone interviews, wewere able to convince more projectmanagers to participate in our studycompared to conducting face-to-faceinterviews, which are typically moreeffort-intensive. Additionally, the inter-views were our only data source. For thepurpose of data triangulation, we askedrespondents for company guidelinesgrowing popularity of agile develop-ment, different customer expectationsalso pertain to the choice of the devel-opment approach. Robert recalled aproject in which “the customer was veryexperienced. . . . He stated clearly that hewanted the waterfall model as processmodel. . . . It was strictly prescribed bythe customer.” Robert then went on todescribe how the customer was con-vinced to use a more agile approachin the face of the incomplete require-ments at hand. Overall, a careful con-sideration whether to comply withcustomer expectations or, for instance,to advise a higher level of involve-ment is needed. As Mark stated, “Thiscan barely be formalized. It stronglydepends on the parties involved. Theproject manager needs to find hisown connection to the customer.”Moreover, approaches might not beapplicable in some cases at all. Promisesby sales departments might be madeprior to initializing a project, when it israther difficult to judge whether prom-ises are realistic. Once promises aremade, the customer might lose trust inthe contractor if promises are adaptedduring the course of the project. Theapproaches’ applicability and thus thelikeliness to increase project successmight therefore be contingent on theproject context. Moreover, differencesmight exist considering public and pri-vate customers. The expectations towardthe development process identified inour study mostly focus on the involve-ment of the customer. However, publiccustomers might have additional expec-tations toward the development process(e.g., usage of the V-model is a typi-cal requirement concerning the devel-opment approach for projects in theGerman public sector to ensure quality).In such cases, contractors need to care-fully consider whether to respond tosuch expectations (e.g., if relevant expe-riences are missing, the fulfillment ofsuch process expectations can be costly).

Finally, leadership and social skills
are critical competencies of project
managers when it comes to manag-